Magnetic products

There are many products out there which use static magnetic fields designed to provide a range of health benefits to your horse. These include magnetic rugs, hock boots, fetlock boots and leg boots.

What do they do?

The magnets within the products are thought to relax capillary walls and the surrounding soft tissue. This essentially would lead to an increase in blood flow and oxygen supply, which aids recovery and healing.

Claimed benefits from commercially available products

• Maintained circulation
• Reduced muscle tension
• Aids recovery of muscle fatigue
• Tissue oxygen supply
• Can help to maintain the overall wellbeing of your horse.
• Reduce scar tissue
• Reduce inflammation
• Reducing swelling
• Reduce stiffness
• Reduce muscle cramps
• Aid arthritis
• Increases blood flow, helps to relieve stiffness and reduce filling in horse's legs

Let’s look at the research…
An early research paper looked into the “Effect of a static magnetic field on blood flow to the metacarpus in horses” by Steyn et al., [2000]. They used 6 healthy horses and a commercially available magnetic wrap was placed onto one metacarpal of each horse and a control wrap was placed on the contralateral limb for 48 hours. They found no significant difference in blood flow between the control wrap and the magnetic wrap.

So what does this mean?

This research cannot disprove that the magnetic wraps are effective in providing health benefits to the horse, however they can conclude that potential health benefits do not arise from an increase in blood flow. The researchers suggested a potential reason for this could be that the magnets within the wraps provide a weak magnetic field, potentially caused by the arrangement and flexibility of the magnetics and/or the wraps do not fit directly to the limb surface and therefore may not be strong enough to expose the underlying blood vessels to the magnetic field.

A more recent research paper looked into the effect of magnetic blankets (rugs), titled “Does a magnetic blanket induce changes in muscular blood flow, skin temperature and muscular tension in horses?” by Edner et al., [2015]. They used 10 horses and a commercially available magnetic rug was placed on each horse for 60 minutes and then a placebo rug on the consecutive day. On each day, local skin temperature, muscle blood flow, behaviour of the horse and mechanical nociceptive threshold were measure before, during and after each condition.  Blood flow in the back muscles, skin temperatures, MNTs and behavioural traits did not differ between active and placebo magnetic blankets. They also found that skin temperature increased similarly during the magnetic rug and placebo rug treatment.

So what does this mean?

This research, in support of the previous research, found that magnetic rugs do not result in significant differences in back muscle blood flow or skin temperature. The research suggests that the magnetic rugs may not result in significant changes to affect muscle relaxation or reduce tension.
 
My opinion – I feel very passionate that anything you do or use with your horse is backed up by research. There doesn’t seem to be much research out there currently to support the use of magnetic products or to support the claims made by the companies and so I personally would not invest in these products for the time being until more research has been conducted to provide clinical evidence of how effective they are. Please check out the research behind products to make your own educated opinion and whether you would like to use these for your horses.  

Research paper 1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10997160/
Research paper 2: ​https://beva.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evj.12291